“No,” I said, “the ward is still up. I felt it downstairs, just as strong as before.”
“Then how the hell did they find us?” she demanded.
“They’re not the only ones,” I said. “Someone else got inside. Last night, when you were asleep.”
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “What? Who?”
“His name is Bennett. Was Bennett. He’s dead now.”
She blinked. “You killed him?”
“Complicated question, but no, when he stopped by he was already dead. He was all … messed up.”
“You should have told me someone got in,” Bethany said angrily.
“I didn’t have a chance. He gave me something, a charm I think, and the next thing I knew it zapped me across town to Columbus Circle. But first Bennett warned me. He said something was coming for me. Bethany, this is all my fault. It’s me they’re looking for.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “They’re not looking for you, they’ve been turning this place upside down looking for the box. That’s the only reason Thornton and I are still in one piece. They were too busy trying to find the box to look for us.”
“That doesn’t make sense. The box isn’t even here. You said it was with Gregor.”
“They don’t know that.” She chewed her bottom lip as she thought. “Whoever summoned them gave them the wrong information. But it still doesn’t explain how they got past the ward.”
Ingrid had wondered the same thing. She’d said someone had betrayed us.
And then it hit me. God, how could I have been so stupid? I’d wondered why Bennett was bothering to help me, but I should have trusted my instincts. When I’d come back to the house, the front door was unlocked. Someone had to have done that from the inside, and there was only one person who would have.
Bennett. He’d led the shadowborn right into the safe house.
If I saw that dead son of a bitch again, I would put a stake through his fucking heart.
“It was Bennett,” I told Bethany. “He lied to me. He played me like a damn fool.” But if Bennett and the shadowborn were working together, why give me advance warning? Why get me out of the house before they came? What was he up to?
The dresser bucked hard against me, as if all three shadowborn had thrown themselves against the door at once.
“You said he gave you a charm?” Bethany asked. “Let me see it.”
Bracing my legs, I pulled the small, bean-shaped object out of my pocket and tossed it to her quickly.
Bethany studied the charm a moment, turning it over in her hand. “It’s a displacer, a limited range teleportation charm. They’re almost impossible to come by and extremely difficult to engineer. Dead or not, this Bennett has some impressive skills.”
“I doubt he made that thing,” I said. “That’s what keeps sticking in my head. If Bennett had access to something like this, he would still be alive.”
She frowned. “You should have told me. It’s never a good sign when the dead are up and walking.”
Thornton growled at her.
“Present company excluded,” she added.
“But that’s the weird thing, he wasn’t like Thornton,” I said. “He didn’t have an amulet. He was just … walking and talking.”
“That’s impossible,” she said. “Spirits of the dead can only possess the living, they can’t possess dead bodies, not even their own. At least, not without the help of a charm like the Breath of Itzamna. And to even get a dead body to rise at all is…” She paused. “Wait. Did you see anything in his eyes, like a light that didn’t belong there?”
I nodded, gritting my teeth as I pushed back against the lurching dresser. “A red light.”
Thornton stopped pacing. He turned to Bethany and whined.
“Trent, that wasn’t the man you knew,” she said. “That was a revenant, a dead body controlled by magic. It’s a puppet, nothing more.”
“But he knew me,” I said. “He mentioned things only he would know.”
“Whoever created the revenant would have access to his memories as long as his brain was still fresh enough. But to even create a revenant, you’d have to be an extremely powerful necromancer…” She trailed off, chewing her lip again. “I don’t like this. Something’s going on. Revenants, the shadowborn … this is much bigger than we thought.”
There was another thump on the door. This time, the sharp tip of a katana broke through the wood. I flinched away from the blade but kept my back against the dresser.
“We’re running out of time,” I said. “Tell me you’ve figured out a way to get past the three zombie musketeers out there.”
She sighed. “We can’t, that’s the problem. We’re trapped here. The Avasthi phalanx is the only thing keeping us safe. The minute we leave this room, we’re dead.”
“There’s got to be a way,” I said. “We fought off the gargoyles, we’ll fight these guys off, too.”
She shook her head the way you do when a small child says things that are funny and sad at the same time. “We don’t stand a chance. The shadowborn are trained assassins. They don’t leave survivors.”
“We’re not dead yet,” I told her. “We’ve still got Bennett’s charm, the whatever you call it, the displacer. Do you know how to make it work?”
Her grim expression told me it wasn’t going to be as easy as that. “I do, but displacers are designed to teleport a single individual, not three. It won’t get us all out.” She held the charm out to me. “You should take it. I can get you away from here. This was never your fight to begin with.”
The shadowborn pushed against the door. I strained against the dresser to keep the door from breaking. “Forget it. We’ll find another way.”
“No one’s asking you to be a hero,” she insisted. “This might be your only chance to get out of here alive. Please, just take it. I don’t think I can handle another death on my conscience.” Her bright blue eyes were big and shimmering. It would have broken my heart if there weren’t three moldering corpses on the other side of the door trying to kill us.
“I’m not leaving you here,” I said.
She stared at me, then sighed and dropped the displacer into a pocket in her vest. “I don’t get you, Trent. I can’t figure you out.”
“Join the club,” I said. “Look, last night I told you I don’t know who I am, but the truth is, I’m starting to think maybe I do. And right now, I’m the guy who gets you out of here.”
Thornton gave a short warning bark as two more katana blades broke through. The shadowborn were focusing their efforts on one part of the door, trying to chop a hole in the wood.
Bethany sat down on the floor, dropped her sword, and put her head in her hands. She was panicking, giving up, but I couldn’t let that happen, not if we were going to survive this. I had to keep her focused.
“If I’m going to get us out of here, I need you to tell me everything you know about the shadowborn. You said spirits can’t possess dead bodies, but I saw what’s under their masks. They look pretty damn dead to me.”
There was another loud thump against the door. The dresser rocked precariously, almost knocking me away. Bethany flinched. It unnerved me to see her this frightened. If someone like her could come undone, it meant none of us were safe.
“Bethany, I can’t do this without you,” I said.
Finally, she looked up at me. “Right, the shadowborn. Okay. Legend has it they were heroes once, defenders of the weak and vulnerable. Some well-meaning magician put a spell on them, an immortality spell, to thank them. This was in the early days after the Shift, when no one knew yet just how dangerous magic had become. The spell twisted their minds. They became thieves, mercenaries, assassins for hire. Only, the immortality spell worked, or at least it half-worked. They were granted eternal life, just not eternal youth to go with it. They never stopped aging. The shadowborn aren’t spirits who’ve returned to their dead bodies. Their spirits never left their bodies, not even after those bodies withered and rotted. That’s why there’s nothing we can do. That’s why we can’t kill them. There’s nothing left to kill.”